Foreign [Music]
This morning, comments from the Book of Judges, chapter 6, beginning in verse 33. If you’ll turn with me please. Now all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East came together and they crossed the Jordan and encamped in the valley of Jezreel. But the spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet, and the Abizirites were called out to follow him. He sent messengers throughout all Manasseh, and they too were called out to follow him. He sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they went up to meet them.
Then Gideon said to God, ‘If you will save Israel by my hand as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand as you have said.’ And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl of water.
Then Gideon said to God, ‘Let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more with the fleece. Please let me test just once more with the fleece; please let it be dry on the fleece only and on all the ground let there be dew.’ And God did so that night, and it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Lord, you have given us your word to be our rule of faith, to be a guide and an example. Let it fill our hearts. Let it bring us comfort and joy and hope in your promises. Let it increase and build up our faith and our trust in you. Let you speak to us through your word and by the testimony of your Holy Spirit. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Gideon was chosen, called, and commissioned by the Lord. Gideon was a religious radical and anti-pop culture revolutionary. Gideon survived an attempt of ultimate cancellation at the hands of the offended masses after his stand for the Lord and truth with his socially subversive act of tearing down the people’s popular idols and exposing them as the powerless lies which they are.
Gideon convinced and converted his own father, who defended both him and the Lord’s cause against Baal’s deceived worshipers. But Josh said to all who stood against him, ‘Will you contend for Baal or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a God, let him contend for himself because his altar has been broken down.’ Thus, Gideon’s name was cemented into the role of faith. He was a certifiable folk hero, a man whose name and story was surely remembered in Israel, much as we remember John Henry beating the steam engine, Pecos Bill lassoing the tornado, or Paul Bunyan carving out the Great Lakes before settling down in Bemidji, Minnesota.
If the story of Gideon, or dribbable as he was now known, had ended here, then we would still have a good story and an example of an ancient Israelite hero standing firm in faith, standing in defense of all that is right, good, and true. A hero who stood confident in the Lord’s truth against the lies of Satan and all the seductions of the world. Yet the Lord God still had more for him to do next.
Sometime after the riot he nearly caused by desecrating Baal’s safe and sacred space, now all the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the people of the East came together and crossed the Jordan and encamped in the valley of Jezreel. Our story does not say how long after that particular event the locust-like swarm of Israel’s enemies next plagued the land, but it was certainly long enough for word about our hero to spread.
It’s very unlikely that the Midianites, Amalekites, and other Eastern peoples gathered together as a response to Gideon’s sacrilege. Nothing in the story suggests that they were even concerned about him; they probably did not even know his name. God’s enemies were unaware of the judgment that was coming for them. They were self-assured, self-confident, and certain that their present vacation in Canaan would be just like all the ones they had enjoyed before: pillage, plunder, and then move on. But the Lord had other plans for them because he raised up Gideon to deliver Israel.
But the spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet. The Lord was with Gideon; he was clothed, filled, and covered by the spirit of the Lord, something which had not occurred in scripture since the first judge, Othniel. This makes and declares Gideon to be a spiritual successor to Joshua and to Moses, and this anointing by the Holy Spirit marks Gideon out as being Mashiach, a Messiah and a Christ, setting him apart as the divinely appointed leader of God’s elect.
And the Abizirites were called out to follow him. The Abizirites, Gideon’s local family and clan, accepted and affirmed God’s choice of Gideon to lead them. He sent messengers throughout all Manasseh, and they too called out to follow him. So, the rest of his tribe’s people, his broad extended family, also heard his call and responded affirmatively.
He sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they went up to meet them. Even other Israelites beyond his kin, clan, and tribe, the other northernmost tribes came at his call. Earlier, Manasseh and Asher did not come to the aid of Deborah and Barak against Sisera, refusing to help Zebulun and Naphtali from the oppression of Jabin, king of Hazor. But those two Galilean tribes also came marching to the beat of Gideon’s drum, to aid their cousins and come to the aid of their family.
Surely this must have been an Israelite force to be reckoned with—the combined might of four tribes, the four tribes surrounding the Jezreel Valley. A coalition of the Lord’s faithful gathered together to defend his people and his land against an invading horde of Gentile despoilers. Surely their faithful response was evidence that the Lord had remembered his chosen people, that he remains faithful to the covenant promises he made to them—that he is now rising to their rescue.
Who could doubt it? Gideon. Gideon could doubt it. Then Gideon said to God, ‘If you will save Israel by my hand as you’ve said.’ Remember, Gideon was only a young man when the Lord called him to deliver Israel from the Midianites. His response was, ‘Who, me?’ He had only just recently been thrust into the limelight, into public awareness, because he had taken such a public and radical stand against idolatry in Israel. And now he is summoned to gather an army which the Lord was expecting him to lead.
Gideon did not feel as if life had prepared him for such a responsibility. So, yes, his doubt was reasonable and relatable because it is self-doubt, not doubt in the power of the Lord. Gideon was looking for reassurance from God; he was looking to find the confidence he lacked in himself—the confidence to deliver anybody, much less himself.
And that’s what leads us to his next unusual and atypical act: doing something which otherwise seems to be prohibited by scripture. Gideon will test God. During the early part of Israel’s journey from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, the Israelites set up camp somewhere out in the wilderness without a nearby water supply.
Now scripture doesn’t give us an exact number of those who followed Moses out of Egypt, but Exodus 12:37 tells us, ‘And the people of Israel journeyed from Ramesses to Succoth, about 600,000 men on foot, besides women and children.’ Six hundred thousand men—mobile men, men who could walk unaided, men which according to ancient practice were only men of military age—there’s who got counted in this census.
So it was six hundred thousand men plus their wives and children. If we assume a very conservative estimate, an average of one wife and one child for each man, then that would suggest around 1.8 million human souls following Moses. That’s the low end for the probable range, along with all of their attended cattle and sheep. That many people and animals were going to need a lot of water. So the people called with Moses and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’
And Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ And because the crowd then transformed into a mob ready to stone him, God said to Moses, ‘Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.’
Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of the place Masa and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel and because they tested the Lord by saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’
The Israelites tested the Lord at Masa because they lacked faith in him, in his goodness and his promise to provide for them as his own people. They knew who the Lord is, but they doubted whether or not he really was with them, just as Gideon now seemed to be doubting whether the Lord was with him.
There is, however, a great difference between Gideon’s doubt and the doubt of the Israelites at Masa. The doubt of the Israelites led to the Torah prohibition: ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Masa,’ Deuteronomy 6:16. A prohibition skeptically cited by King Ahaz to the prophet Isaiah.
Again, the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ‘Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.’ But Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test,’ prompting God to respond with our favorite Christmas prophecy: ‘Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.’
Isaiah prophesied to Ahaz a sign for the strengthening and encouragement of the faith of those who already believed—not to prove that the Lord is God or to wash away doubt of his existence, but a test to show them clearly that God is with us.
Testing the Lord out of disbelief always leads to negative consequences, whether one is cynically asking God to prove himself, to prove that he actually is God or if one is distrusting his word and wagering against him—against his power and the promises of his justice. Ananias and Sapphira learned the hard way that they must not test the Lord. But Peter said to her, ‘How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.’ Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in, they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
They acted as they did because they did not really believe that Jesus Christ the Lord nor that Peter and the others were his apostles, nor that the Lord would actually enact judgment upon the guilty. They thought that they could cheat God to their social benefit and get away with it with impunity.
How many people do we know that regularly risk God’s judgment and retribution because of their disbelief? How often do we, those who have faith in Christ Jesus and believe that he is the Lord, how often do we still act as if we were non-believers ourselves and risk God’s judgment, trusting in his grace, hoping for his mercy to forgive our sin, all the while ignoring his righteous commandments and avoiding everything that he calls us to do?
Do we, you might I, test the Lord out of our hearts’ secret disbelief in his wrath and justice? We do not really think about it, and I don’t think that any one of us here thinks about acting that way. But I would wager that we all still test God unintentionally, out of some latent disbelief hidden deep within our hearts from our sinful nature that remains.
Perhaps we might be saying to ourselves, ‘I’m sure that God will forgive me for doing this even though I know that it is wrong and it goes against his word and his will for my life. I’ll do it, and then I’ll just repent and ask for forgiveness later.’ But later is neither a given nor a certainty for any of us. Choosing to sin, especially once we know that all sin is offensive to God is everything that Paul repeatedly told the church in Corinth to not do. Faith in Christ does not give us a license to sin; it is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Faith in Christ makes us free to not sin, allowing us to choose the way of obedience and faithfulness to Christ instead of remaining in bondage to the sinful nature and our wicked desires.
Now Gideon’s doubt is different from the doubt of those at Masa, so his testing of the Lord was also different from theirs. His doubt is not that God is; he does not doubt that God can deliver Israel. He does not doubt that the Lord has the power to fulfill his promises to the elect. Gideon is simply uncertain, doubtful whether God is with him personally—something that I expect we can all relate to.
He doubted that this role, this duty in charge was what the Lord is calling him to do. Gideon did not believe in himself. He did not yet believe that God had called him to deliver Israel. He wanted to be sure that he was not merely chasing after his own glory and his own heart’s desire. He knew that he was neither qualified nor capable to lead God’s people or his army. So that’s why he turned to the Lord in this manner.
He knew that it is only by the Lord’s will, favor, and power that Israel can be delivered and not by the might of men, nor by his own strength and valor. Gideon knew that he could not save Israel or himself on his own; he needed the Lord. And by the end of it all, he would better understand that God does not call the equipped; he equips the called. Even though he was clothed with the spirit of the Lord, Gideon was not sure still if God was with him—a feeling which I expect that we can all relate to, even as we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
We sometimes still are not so sure, so Gideon asked God for certainty so that he may know that God is actually with him. Then Gideon said to God, ‘If you will save Israel by my hand as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone and it is dry all around on the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand as you have said.’
That’s a simple but rather straightforward sounding test, right? Gideon was going to leave a fleece, a pad of sheep’s wool, out in the open under the stars, left out overnight. What he was asking to find in the morning was dry ground while the fleece was still wet. And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water.
But, of course, that is the problem. Remember back when we first met him? Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And a winepress during that time was more like a hole dug out of a rock than a wooden barrel filled with grapes—with Lucille Ball stomping them. Yeah, I’ve seen that episode too. When we met Gideon, he was beating the wheat; he was threshing it.
So it seems likely that Gideon’s fleece was left there in the winepress, which was his threshing floor. But big deal; so what? Wool and woolen fleece will absorb water, trapping it between the fibers, yet it will not feel soaking or sopping wet. It works almost like a sponge. So if you place such an absorbent fleece at the bottom of a hole in the ground, then you would expect the fleece to be wet with dew longer than the surrounding area. It will soak up as much water as it can while all the rest evaporates. So naturally, the fleece will be wet while the ground is dry—not such a miraculous sign after all, is it?
This is not really a good test of the Lord’s favor unless, of course, you want to give yourself a particular answer. Gideon’s request was a question designed to generate a positive answer through a negative or lack of response. Like, ‘Okay, God, if you really want me to do this, then just let whatever would normally happen happen.’ Or, ‘Okay, God, if you really, really want me to do this, then when I drop this pen, let it hit the floor.’
He did not actually ask God for a miraculous sign to reassure himself; he was actually reassuring himself by asking God to not do anything different from what is normal. But I think Gideon quickly realized the error of his request because he did not want to generate some self-fulfilling prophecy for himself. He did not want to give in to his own pride, self-confidence, or selfish desire for recognition and power.
Because then Gideon said to God, ‘Let not your anger burn against me. Let me speak just once more; please let me test just once more with the fleece. Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew.’
Now that is a test! If you want God to give you a sign, then you must ask him to do something hard, something challenging, something which only the Lord can do. Either Gideon really did not want to go and do as he had been commanded, or he really wanted to be sure that he was going to go and do the Lord’s will and so be assured of success—because he knew that he should not have been testing God.
By testing God two times, actually, he knew and admitted that he was risking the Lord’s wrath by saying, ‘Let not your anger burn against me.’ He knew that testing God was a bad idea, that it was against Torah. So he must have felt that he had a good enough reason to risk it again.
I do not think that Gideon doubted that God could rescue Israel; merely that he doubted that God was going to do it with him as his chosen ordained agent. Gideon was showing more humility than doubt by asking the Lord for assurance. He knew that if Israel was to be victorious, then it could not, would not happen by his own strength. Victory could only be because of and by God.
So the second time, Gideon asks God for an actual miracle, asking the equivalent of, ‘Okay, God, if you really want me to do this, then when I put this sponge into a bucket filled with water and leave it overnight, I want to find the bucket full but leave the sponge dry,’ something that would be otherwise impossible. And God did so that night, and it was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.
This Gideon got his answer: the Lord God was with him, and the Lord was going to help him rescue Israel. What does that have to do with us today? Or what does that story have to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Gideon is one of those biblical heroes who are raised up as exemplars of the faith. His is one of the names warranting remembrance in the roll of faith of Hebrews 11. ‘And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war and put foreign armies to flight.’
The author of Hebrews says that Gideon is a part of that great cloud of witnesses to faithfulness that surrounds us, which encourages us to run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Gideon is considered a paragon of faith because when he was called to service, when he was called to do the difficult things and obey God in faithfulness to do what was impossible for him to do alone, he looked to the Lord for help instead of relying on himself or other men. When Gideon was faced with the task of leading the Lord’s army against the Midianites, he did not trust in himself or look to his own strength for the victory. Instead, he was looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.
And we will all benefit from being more like Gideon in this regard. We would all be better off if we look to the Lord in faith in spite of all of our doubts and fears, trusting him and praying to Jesus like the father of the possessed child, ‘I believe; help my unbelief.’
Because oftentimes, that is the single greatest problem which a Christian will ever face—knowing and believing that Jesus is actually with them and acting like it. Sometimes we will doubt whether he really is here beside us, and that’s where the poem ‘Footsteps’ has such the emotional appeal that it does. We cannot help but sometimes doubt that God is there.
We want assurance, and sometimes the indwell testimony of the Holy Spirit does not always feel like enough. How often might we lie awake at night and ask God to prove himself to us, to prove to us that we really are saved, that we actually have been transformed and made into a new and different person? Might we not, like Gideon, also ask the Lord for a sign for some extra assurance of his presence?
In those moments, we will test God for our faith; but rather than condemning our doubt, he makes it easier for us to believe. He gives us faith; he strengthens our faith, and God is gracious and forgiving towards this kind of doubt and disbelief of ours.
Do we doubt that God is, or do we doubt the power of his gospel of grace in those moments? No, instead we doubt ourselves. We doubt the effect which the Holy Spirit and which Jesus has had on us and our lives. Why do we doubt it? We doubt it because we’re too close to ourselves to see the changes that he has wrought in us, and because Satan loves to remind us of how sinful we still are, trying to tear us down while those around us with eyes to see can see those changes much more clearly.
We all need assurance in our faith, and that’s why we need the balm of the gospel—a constant reminder and a constant reassurance for our moments of doubt. And the good news is that Jesus loves sinners, even sinners like us. He loves sinners so much that he came down to Earth, was born like us, lived like us, experienced joy like us, and suffered like us without ever sinning—unlike us. He died a human death just like we all will, but in dying that death, he died to sin for us as our substitute.
A perfect, unblemished, willing sacrifice of atonement given in love. He suffered our Heavenly Father’s righteous and just wrath which we were due in our place so that we will be raised, cleansed, and transformed into eternal life like Christ. Jesus loves sinners so much that he has redeemed us; he transforms us from being sinners into saints.
And if you have been called and you trust in him, then you and everything about you is being transformed and sanctified. You are not being left in your sin or as you once were. By grace, you are now a redeemed sinner and are being moved by the Holy Spirit along this path from sinner to saint.
Jesus, he gets us. He understands us; he loves us so much that rather than leaving us as we once were, he chose to become like us so that we could become like him. Gideon was called by the Lord to deliver Israel, and the Midianites, after being called, what was the first thing he did? He cleaned house, tearing down the altars to false gods in his life and in the lives of his family and friends.
He was changed. He began by repenting of his idolatrous sins; then he mortified his sin, and then through his acts of faithful witness, others began to see the folly of idol worship and return to the Lord. But he could not see or recognize his own changes. After he was changed and clothed by the Holy Spirit, he began doing the work God called him to do.
But he could not tell; he doubted if he truly was working for the Lord. Yet that really is a kind of healthy doubt. Think about it. The more sure and more certain some folks are about their salvation, the more arrogant and unchristian-like they may begin to act, suggesting that they may not actually be redeemed at all.
They act just as they once were, but now with a Christianized flavor. However, the Christian—the true believer—may not always feel certain about their salvation. We will sometimes wonder if we are saved, and this kind of doubt is healthy because it causes us to pause and examine ourselves, to look for evidence of our transformation and to find areas of sin in our lives which we still need to mortify.
Truthfully, a little bit of doubt and concern for the status of your soul is really a healthy thing for a Christian because you care about it. It demonstrates that you care about what Jesus thinks. It proves that you want to obey him and his commandments, and it is such a drastic change from your life before that we forget just how deeply we held God’s holy law in contempt.
This kind of doubt shows that you examine your own life, seek out your own sins to put them to death in your heart, and are thus repentant. This kind of doubt is good because then the Holy Spirit, who dwells within every believer, will act as your comforter and he will strengthen your faith.
Having this kind of concern for your own soul may well be the greatest assurance of Christ’s pardon by faith in him that we can have. Because an unsaved person will not care about the state of their soul. An unsaved person will not be concerned about offending Jesus, nor will they worry about the eternal consequences of their sin.
And perhaps greatest of all, an unsaved person will not worry about losing their salvation because nobody worries about losing something that they do not have. So yes, it is okay when we do test the Lord like Gideon, although we may not consciously realize it. But we must not test him as they did at Masa.
It is okay for we who have faith, his elect, to ask him to show us something impossible, to show us a miracle, to show us something which only he can do because that’s part of how he encourages us and builds up our faith. But do not bet your continued faith in Christ on that outcome. We do not need to ask him for this proof because he has already given us the miracle, the evidence of our changed lives.
So ask him to show you the changes in your life because they are changes that you could not make in or of yourself without him first regenerating and transforming your heart. Test God and have your heart say to God, ‘Let me be set apart in Christ from all the world and its corruption. Transform to become pure and clean, untouched by sin, just as Gideon’s fleece was set apart and kept dry from the morning dew. Let me see this change and know that you are with me.’
And that is an assurance you can always carry with you. Through a probate, they will also test the Lord—except because they have not been saved and they do not want to be saved or even want to be forgiven of their sins. They will ask him to show them something they expect to see. They will say to God, ‘Let us be like Gideon’s fleece and soak in all of the sin and wickedness, the evil and the darkness of the world, and let it be bound up inside us, and let the world around us be cleansed and restored.’ And they will be assured as well, resting in all the lies of Satan.
So if you need that personal assurance of salvation, of your transformation by God’s grace, then stop and look back on your life. Try to remember just how you were before you knew that you were saved by Jesus, and compare that to how you are now. If that moment is too far back for you to remember, then think back a year or five or ten and look for the different changes and sanctifying improvements which have taken place all along.
Ask your friends and family what changes they have noticed in you. Read your old letters, your emails, text messages, diaries, and I’m sure that you will see a difference. You will see evidence of God’s miracle of grace upon your life.
And the longer you walk with Jesus, the more closely you will come to resemble him. It’s a slow process, and different aspects are being improved at different rates at different times. Every Christian’s journey of sanctification is different, so you must not compare yourself to anybody else. We’re all at different points on the same path, but we are all still heading in the same direction: into the kingdom of heaven. Amen.
Let us stand and say what we believe using the words of the Apostles’ Creed: ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended to heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.’
Our closing hymn is number 372, ‘Our God Reigns.’
Foreign.